1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to design models and more specifically, to a symbolic conceptual design model development environment that allows the linking of specific items of information contained within files of different formats to an object store for the purpose of creating a symbolic conceptual design model.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Current processes for the design of products of all sorts are only partly automated. In particular, in the conceptual design phase, the designer is typically given an assemblage of materials that constrain the desired design without consideration of their mutual consistency or completeness. Moreover, these materials have no standard format or language; they may be Word files, e-mails, CAD files, and other forms of information, each containing one or more pieces of information to constrain the desired design, such as dimensions, weight, or thermal considerations.
Furthermore, the conceptual design process is presently effected by largely manual techniques. The notes and sketches designers produce during this phase are seldom preserved. So the designers' employers retain no record of the decisions made during conceptual design-decisions whose documentation could prove very valuable to the employers for subsequent work. But most engineers cannot be compelled to preserve such documentation, as they view it as personal work-in-process, and its clarification for posterity as being irrelevant to the task at hand. Moreover, they are uncomfortable with typing as a method of data entry.
Accordingly, there is a clearly felt need in the art for a symbolic conceptual design model development environment that automates the conceptual design process, in a manner that does not impose an additional burden of documentation upon the design engineer the result of that is the creation of a symbolic model of a design. In this symbolic model are preserved both the decisions made in the conceptual design process, and the reasons for them as well as the design choices that were considered but rejected. All this is preserved in a form that other designers can examine and re-use.